Blood Sisters

by Caroline de Costa

  They stopped at a grassy lookout at the side of the road, enjoying the soft warmth of the early morning sun on their limbs. The mist had now lifted completely to reveal a panoramic view of the sea spread out under a blue winter sky; they could just make out the morning’s paragliders taking off. High above, a wedge-tailed eagle soared on gusts of air.

  They slurped at their water bottles, and Emily produced some chocolate. Using the binoculars, she followed where the streets should run up to the McFadden house. From where they stood, the house was shrouded in thick rainforest.

  Then Scarlett pointed down to their right and said: ‘Blue, there’s a bit of a path down there. It looks like it would lead across to above where the house must be. Will we give it a go?’

  ‘Yeah, let’s hide the bikes off the road, and take the binoculars with us.’

  The path was hardly more than a narrow track carved out between vines and small trees. Scarlett led the way. ‘Keep a lookout for snakes,’ Emily said. ‘Even tree snakes. I don’t want to meet them.’

  The path opened out into a clearing where there were several rusting fridges and washing machines. It was difficult to see exactly where it led out on the other side.

  ‘We need to mark where we’re going,’ Scarlett said, ‘like we learned on Year Nine camp. Or we’ll get lost. We’ve got our mobiles, but I don’t want to have to call Mum, and anyway, there might be some black spots up here.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that,’ Emily said. She reached into her backpack and took out a length of green Baptist College hair ribbon and a Swiss Army knife. The girls crossed the clearing and Scarlett tied a piece of ribbon to a tree near what looked the most likely way forward.

  About 500 metres across the hill and downwards, after a rough passage through scrub that they marked with several more ribbons, they found themselves on a spit of land a few hundred metres above the McFadden house. Looking diagonally down there was a good view of the backyard of the property. A view it was impossible to get from Holliday Close.

  Though the house was still quite far away and they were concealed by the forest, the girls began to whisper to each other.

  ‘We need to keep hidden,’ Emily said, and Scarlett nodded, moving behind a tree.

  ‘Make sure you keep the binocs out of the sunlight, too,’ she said, ‘or the reflection might give us away. That’s if anyone’s looking.’

  Emily looked admiring. ‘How’d you think of that?’

  ‘A movie I saw. American soldiers caught a German soldier who was hiding in a ruined castle in the war, looking out with field glasses. The glass flashed.’

  ‘Right, Captain!’

  They inched forward in the protection of the trees. Emily peered down for a while before handing the binoculars to Scarlett.

  There was a large concreted yard between the main house and a building like a storehouse behind it. Separating the two buildings was a timber fence with a gate in the middle. The storehouse building was single-storeyed. There was only one door in, on the house side.

  Several vehicles were in the yard—a white truck with a tarpaulin cover, a black four-wheel drive and a small blue hatchback. The red Mercedes could be seen in an open garage under the main house. The back gate leading into the street was closed.

  There were no trees around the house itself. There were tall exterior lights by the back door and the back gate. At the side of the house, away from the street, was a swimming pool and some play equipment: a swing and slide. A ginger cat was sitting in the sun by the back door.

  Over the next hour or so the girls took turns with the binoc-ulars, while sitting on a fallen log, but nothing was happening. This was getting boring.

  They ate more chocolate and drank more water. ‘We can’t stay here, forever,’ Scarlett whispered.

  Then suddenly she stood up, raised the binoculars again, and clutched Emily’s arm. ‘Someone’s coming out the back door,’ she hissed.

  Emily grabbed the binoculars and trained them on the backyard. But even without them Scarlett could see that it was the Chinese man they’d seen yesterday. He was dressed as he had been then, in black jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt and sandals. His large head was completely bald. He was tall, but also very solid with rolls of fat held up by his belt. He was carrying a shopping bag and a box.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ she asked Emily in a whisper.

  ‘I can’t see. It’s too far away.’

  The man crossed the concrete yard. Putting the box down, he undid a bolt on the house side of the fence so that the gate swung open. Then he made his way to the front door of the rear building. There was a stool by the door, and he rested the box on it. He knelt down and unbolted the door close to the ground. From his belt he took a collection of keys and unlocked the door at the top. Picking up the box again, he balanced it carefully as he opened the door with his foot. He disappeared into the building and banged the door behind him.

  Emily continued to train the binoculars on the building for several minutes. Then she said: ‘That’s a bit weird. The door is locked and bolted as well.’

  ‘Like they really don’t want anyone getting in there,’ said Scarlett.

  They thought about this for a while. Then Scarlett said: ‘So maybe there’s something in there...’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emily. ‘Like... what?’

  Scarlett looked hard at Emily, her eyes wide.

  ‘Like drugs, you mean? Yeah, maybe... Let’s wait a while and see if anything else happens.’

  Emily took out her iPod and they sat comfortably on the log with one earphone each, listening to Hug with TVXQ which Emily played twice.

  About ten minutes later, two figures appeared at the far side of the house.

  ‘Braydon,’ said Emily, peering through the binoculars. ‘Going swimming. And his dad, maybe.’ She passed the binoculars to Scarlett.

  ‘I can see a tall fat guy. Quite old to be Braydon’s dad,’ said Scarlett. ‘I can’t really see his face.’

  Braydon jumped into the pool and began slowly to swim laps, in a kind of crawl, egged on by his possible father.

  After a few minutes a woman appeared.

  ‘That’s not Dragon Lady,’ whispered Emily to Scarlett.

  ‘No,’ Scarlett agreed. ‘Maybe her sister.’

  The woman sat down by the pool. The man appeared to be talking to her, then he let himself out the swimming pool gate and went back into the house. Braydon went on swimming.

  Then the man emerged again at the back door of the house and rapidly crossed the yard, passing through the gate in the fence. From his pocket he must have produced keys because he fiddled for a moment with the locks and then swung the front door of the building open. After he disappeared inside, the Chinese man reappeared. The shopping bag he had carried in now seemed empty. He closed the door behind him, recrossed the yard and vanished into the house. Braydon got out of the pool and disappeared inside with the unknown woman.

  Scarlett and Emily waited. A flock of yellow-crested cockatoos came screeching up the valley and settled in the tree above them but there was no further movement in the yard. Scarlett got up and stretched herself.

  ‘Em, let’s go and get an iced coffee. And I’m really hungry.

  ‘And I dunno... Is there really anything suspicious about these people? They bring in furniture from Asia and sell it, probably that building’s just full of furniture and they don’t want anyone stealing it. Maybe Marcie giving me the money had nothing to do with them at all. Maybe it’s someone else she’s scared of. I’d like to help her if I could. It’s so shitty that we can’t ask her. We can’t do anything unless we know where she lives or her mobile number.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Emily agreed. ‘It’d be good to talk to her if we could; ask her some more about what she meant.’

  ‘I could call the detective,’ Scarlett said, doubtfully. ‘Cass Diamond. But maybe I should do it on Monday, not in the weekend.

  ‘We can try looking online before then,’ Emily suggested. ‘
We might find something there. And Monday’s the day I’m going to talk to Meredith, too.’

  16

  Cairns

  Sunday 26th August 2013

  Emily and Scarlett were sitting together in Emily’s dining room. They were supposed to be studying, and schoolbooks were certainly spread around them, but the main activity taking place was texting with Dorcas and Mai Ling who were also in their own homes with their homework around them. Instead of homework, they were all trying to find Marcie.

  They had looked through the personal pages of the Cairns paper. No Marcie.

  Mai Ling texted: if it was me I wouldn’t give my real name either

  They’d tried websites—Cairns sex workers, Cairns escort services, adult services—but anything with names on it was barred to under 18s or cost money to join.

  There were a few news items about Cairns sex workers, mostly from 2010. ‘Sex worker turf war.’ ‘Asian women competing.’

  A spokesman from something called the Prostitution Law Enforcement Taskforce said that it was possible syndicates were operating in Cairns. This had happened in the past.

  A sex worker named Tiffannee told a reporter: ‘This is money that should be staying in Cairns not going out of the town and overseas’. Tiffannee added: ‘The going rate is $130 an hour but these girls get $60 or even less.’

  Scarlett texted: 130 an hour thats more than 2x what my mum gets as a midwife

  They contemplated the earnings of sex workers for a few moments. Then Dorcas texted: just found something—Ritas Friends—group of sex workers formed to help other women in the industry

  Mai Ling replied: yes I can see them too they formed after that murder remember? Rita something? think she was from philippines too

  Yeh about 3 years ago, wrote Dorcas.

  check out their site help with law health checks staying safe texted Emily.

  they might know where marcie lives, from Mai Ling.

  theyve got a mobile no said Dorcas.

  will we call them? Mai Ling again.

  yes yes yes, they agreed.

  who’s gonna do it? asked Mai Ling.

  Scarlett, replied Emily.

  OK from Scarlett.

  Scarlett punched the number into her mobile.

  ‘Um, hello, my name is Scarlett Smith. I work at the Palmlands Motel.’

  There was a voice at the other end, then Scarlett giggled. ‘No. I just work in the office. After school. It’s where a woman died on Tuesday night. It was on the news. She was um... a sex worker from the Philippines. I want to get in touch with her cousin, Marcie. They were living together here somewhere but I don’t know where. Marcie’s also a sex worker. I thought, since I see you help women who come to Cairns, that you might know how I can find her.’

  Scarlett listened to the voice at the other end then took a piece of paper and scribbled down an address.

  ‘Thanks, very much.’ She pressed the off button.

  ‘You found her?’ Emily asked excitedly.

  ‘Nope, but this is the address of the person who answered the phone. She’s called Erin. She said that with just one name like that, which is probably not the name she uses for work, it could be difficult to find Marcie. But she said that I could go to see her, Erin that is, in McLeod Street. At her place. She sounded a bit cagey, like she wants to check me out before she gives me any information. I guess that’s fair enough. You’d better come with me!’

  ***

  Scarlett and Emily rode their bikes into town, then down McLeod Street. The address Erin had given them was the on the fifth and top floor of a small block of flats. Scarlett pressed the bell and Erin buzzed them up.

  Erin was in her thirties with blonde curly hair that tumbled around her face, and no makeup. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her feet were bare, her toenails painted silver. She led the way to a balcony with an excellent view of the inlet and comfortable outdoor furniture. Passing an open door, Scarlett and Emily could see a bedroom and en suite decorated in red and gold, velvet and satin, with silk cushions and mirrors. Velvet curtains were drawn across the windows and the room smelled of perfume.

  ‘That’s where I work,’ Erin obviously felt the need to explain. There was a second bedroom, light and airy, with a pale green doona and teddy bears on an armchair. ‘And that’s my own bedroom.’

  They sat down.

  ‘I read about the woman who died the other day,’ Erin said. ‘That was terrible. You were working there in the motel? You checked her in?’

  ‘No,’ said Scarlett, ‘she checked in before I started work’.

  Scarlett explained what had happened on Tuesday, and why she wanted to contact Dorrie’s family.

  ‘I met her cousin down at the police station. Em was there, and some other friends from school. We all went for coffee together afterwards. She said her name was Marcellina—Marcie. But we don’t know her last name. Then she had to leave in a big hurry and I didn’t get a mobile number or anything.’

  ‘Why the hurry?’ Erin asked.

  ‘Because another woman arrived to pick her up. An older woman, in a red Merc. Marcie said someone was coming to pick her up, but she didn’t say who. We think that woman was also from the Philippines. She was kind of cross; she was leaning on the horn and Marcie seemed scared of her. Or of something. Marcie got into the car and the woman took off. But what really freaked us was something she said to us just really quickly before she left: that she thought other girls working here like her had... disappeared.’ Scarlett and Emily had already decided they would say nothing about the money Marcie had handed over.

  Erin looked thoughtful, tapping her front teeth with one shapely silver fingernail.

  ‘An older Filipina woman picking up a younger one who is definitely a sex worker,’ she said, ‘and the young one scared. Sounds like an organised syndicate to me. Did you happen to get the number of the car?’

  ‘No,’ answered Scarlett, ‘it was out in the street and we really only saw it side on. It was definitely a Mercedes, though—a station wagon.’ She glanced across at Emily, who very slightly raised an eyebrow. So okay, at the moment they weren’t going to say that they’d found the owner of this car.

  ‘What exactly is a syndicate?’ Emily asked. ’How does that work?’

  ‘An organisation. Illegal. Controlled, probably, from somewhere outside Australia. They probably sent this woman and her cousin here and would take most of their earnings.’

  ‘So, sex trafficking?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Yep, that’s right,’ answered Erin. ‘It’s illegal to take women to other countries for them to engage in sex work. And... do you know anything about the laws in Queensland?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Emily. ‘But we’ve been looking on the net a bit since all this happened to Scarlett. We saw something there about syndicates.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Erin, ‘us, the girls who work here, we’re allowed to work on our own. At home or in some place that a client wants. Or in a licensed brothel. But there’s only one in Cairns. We’re supposed to do our own ads, in the paper or online. We can’t have anyone controlling us. So, no pimps.’

  She stood up and went over to a filing cabinet on the table.

  ‘We started Rita’s Friends three years ago. After the murder of a Filipina sex worker. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Scarlett, ‘we did remember that when we saw it on your website. Did you know Rita?’

  ‘No,’ Erin replied, ‘I didn’t. But that was kind of the thing that got us going. No one around here knew her. Maybe if we had, she might have had someone to call when the guy started giving her trouble. Do you know the guy has never been caught? We were all really spooked by that; I still get the shivers when I think about it. He must have been a client, because she let him into the house. The cops think that, but they couldn’t find him.

  ‘Some of us got together to talk about it. That’s when we set up the group which we named after her: we exchange names—our working nam
es—and email addresses and mobile numbers, so if we’re worried about someone, a client acting funny, or suspicious, we can tell the others and get help.

  ‘Recently, one of my clients built us a website. So now we can give advice to girls about where to find the health clinic, how to deal with problem clients and so on.

  ‘I keep records of girls who want to stay in touch with us. But I’ve had a look through and there’s no one I can see who matches with your Marcie. That doesn’t surprise me, actually. Often the Asian girls aren’t interested. They come just for a few weeks, a lot of them, then go off to Sydney or Melbourne, or back home. They maybe exchange information, maybe swap mobiles between themselves. We wouldn’t know about it.

  ‘Often, I think they might be working for syndicates, but it can be very hard to prove. There was a lot of trouble here about three years ago, just after we started the group. There were these men who were sending Japanese and Chinese girls here for a few weeks at a time. They were coming here, sharing apartments or motel rooms, then after a few weeks they’d leave and meet up with the new girls at the airport. Give them their phones and keys to their rooms and so on, fill them in on how things work here. The guys took most of what the girls earned. The cops came up from Brissie to sort it out but couldn’t touch the guys who were overseas. They could only get at the girls, and the girls were careful about the laws, because they’re scared of the guys and what they’ll do to them or their families if they don’t do what they’re told. It sounds like that’s why Marcie was scared, that she’d be punished because she’d had to go to see the cops.’ Erin shook her head. It seemed she was on the side of these girls.

  ‘But then...’ Erin opened her eyes wide, ‘the girls were threatening us, or someone they knew was. I’d been working here three years then. I got threats on my phone, photos of guns. I changed my mobile number and I still got them! And my tyres slashed. Whoever it was knew how to find me. It was scary!’

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Scarlett, her mind boggling at all this inside information into a Cairns she and her friends had no inkling of. ‘Is it still like that?’